Breath of Hope

(A sermon based on Ezekiel 37 and the vision of the valley of dry bones)

     This valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is led to in his vision seems pretty crazy to most of us, perhaps something out of the opening of a modern sci-fi film – a vast, desolate plain littered by dry and brittle bones. And yet, in our own time and experience, we know the sort of thing he is talking about, this vision is not as strange as we would like to think it is. We have seen them, in news reels and magazines and newspapers and documentaries, the countless trenches dug for mass graves in Germany, in Poland, in Russia, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, silent testimony to man’s violence and inhumanity during the time of war. And time and again we have seen those photos and videos of communities beset by natural catastrophes, earthquakes in Turkey, mudslides in central America, most recently of the devastation wrought by the tsunami in northern Japan, where whole communities were wiped off the face of the earth.

            Like Ezekiel, we stand before the pit of grief and ask, Can these dry bones live? In a place where it seems like there is no future, can there be new life? In a time when the despair is overwhelming, can there be hope?

            These were our questions last April, when twenty folk drawn from this church, the Cotuit Federated Church, and North Falmouth Congregational Church, drove through the emptiness of neighborhood after neighborhood in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and its neighboring town, St. Bernard’s Parish. In some areas, decaying, rotting houses, once submerged under nine plus feet of water, still tottered, each marked with the four-quadrant circle spray-painted by rescue teams in the aftermath of Katrina, indicating whether the utilities were still on, whether the house had been searched, whether there were any pets in the premises, whether any human remains were still inside. In other areas, including where we were put to work, the streets were lined by empty foundation slab after empty foundation slab, all that remained after their decaying, mold-infested structures had been bull-dozed away. All this, over four years after Katrina, over four years after the forced evacuations, after FEMA’s bungling, after formaldehyde-saturated trailers, after families and neighbors becoming separated and relocated to housing hundreds and even thousands of miles away, after federal and state red-tape delaying and at times preventing families from returning to rebuild. If these were not our exact words at the time, surely they could have been: “Can these dry bones live?” Can there be a future for this community? Can these displaced folk ever come together again?

            This is the meaning of Ezekiel’s vision. The dry bones, Ezekiel is told, represent the house of Israel. The valley refers to their exile in Babylon, where the dry bones of the once proud nation now lie lifeless and without hope. The question which God had asked Ezekiel at the outset of the vision, “Can these bones live?”, in reality means, “Can this community live once again? Can the exiles ever hope to go home again, be reconstituted, and prosper? If so, how in heaven can this be?”

            How in heaven, indeed. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, and when he does, the bones come together again, sinews bind them together, flesh covers them. But still they do not live, for one thing more is required – the breath of God. And so at God’s command the wind is summoned – wind being a Hebrew equivalent to breath, to spirit, and the bones live once more, the community is resurrected to new life. In the face of death, where there is the Spirit of God, there is creation, there is new life, there is a resurrected community.

            Resurrection, God tells Ezekiel, is not a privatized, spiritual matter. It is concrete, it is historical, it concerns your existence in the here and now. “Tell the people”, Ezekiel is told, “I am going to open up your graves and bring you up from your graves . . . and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. . . I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil….”

            And all this does not just happen. The message is clear – God is the source of life, and of renewed life, and if God is about anything, it is that God is in the restoration and resurrection business.  God will move God’s people out of death to new life, and God’s spirit will live within them.

            And so the people can live in hope. Appearances are deceiving. When it looks like a death valley, beneath the surface springs of life are preparing to gush up; when all that most people see is a graveyard, those with eyes of faith can see a field getting ready to blossom into new life.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair. The despairing might come to the valley of dry bones to lay cut flowers on the ground as a memorial; those with hope bring to the boneyard their gardening implements, getting ready to water and weed and hoe as the new life springs forth. The despairing are disempowered, weakened, sick at heart; the hopeful are filled with the Spirit, energized, emboldened for the work which lies at hand.

            And then this is what they do. They climb out of the vans, put on the work gloves and the knee pads, pick up the sledgehammer and the nail gun and the skil saw and the paint brush, and they get to work.  One day at a time, one home at a time, one small neighborhood at a time, they work to rebuild a community, to hasten the day when once again slabs will lie hidden beneath solid homes, driveways will be full, jumbalaya will be cooking for the weekend block party, and kids will laughingly play tag in back yards and run out front when they hear the ice cream truck coming. They do this work because they have eyes to see that there is a new world a’coming, and because they know that in this work they have not only each other, they also have a divine partner who breathes new life into dry bones and works tirelessly to raise the dead from their graves.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair.  People who live in hope can take a look at declining church membership and attendance figures, at trends which tell the story of the increasing secularization of society, at the drop-off in faith among the younger generations, and not despair. And instead of sitting back and wishing for the good old days when church and the wider culture walked together hand in glove and were mutually supporting, instead they can get together, as you have done, and together seek to discern how God is at work beneath the surface of all these trends to prepare the day when new life will spring forth in our faith communities, and, particularly, here at West Parish. And then they try to figure out how we might get in step with this resurrecting God who will not let us just lie down in our graves, how we might take concrete steps in both the short and long term to make this faith community as full of life as it possibly can be. You do this, because God’s breath of hope fills your lives.

            Friends, hear this day the Good News which shall be for you and for all people: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”